Anonymous #1 5w

Saying this as someone working on my masters in sociology rn 💔

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Anonymous #1 5w

exactly my thoughts. evolutionary psychology is widely understood as pseudoscience, and i feel this would fall within that category as well.

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Anonymous #3 5w

‘humanity needs multiple cognitive styles,’ yes, but the “style” you’re talking about is qualified by measurable medical symptoms so severe they prevent someone from living a normal life, which is the entire point of a professional giving someone a mental health diagnosis— symptom management to live a healthier life.

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Anonymous #3 5w

This is the dumbest thing I think I’ve read in months. You cannot be “ex-autistic, no longer diagnosed.” Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition. It does not just come and go. If you were misdiagnosed, that is a different story and you should state as such. As a person with high-functioning autism, it is the degree and severity of the autism that causes disabilities. I won’t claim a disability when I own 4 businesses and have 62 patented inventions on the market.

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Anonymous #2 5w

^^^^ especially because this theory completely and absolutely ignores high support needs autistics. We have explanations for why disabled people who struggle to live independently live despite natural selection and “survival of the fittest” it’s because we evolved to care for each other and help the weakest live. If this was like a we need neurodivergence as a species thing maybe there’s some merit but specifically autism is a survival tool falls flat.

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Anonymous #4 5w

you can absolutely grow out of childhood autism if it’s treated very young and very aggressively; it’s just not a common occurrence. if you “own 4 businesses and have 62 patented inventions on the market,” (that’s not how patents work, but whatever), you’re obviously not a doctor and shouldn’t be disputing multiple licensed medical doctors’ assessments of strangers you’ve never met. it’s not “the degree and severity of [a disability] that causes disabilities;” […]

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Anonymous #3 5w

[…] it is the degree and severity of symptoms that determine a diagnosis. you wouldn’t be diagnosed with a disability if it didn’t disable you in some way, regardless of whatever accomplishments you’ve achieved in spite of it. you can disagree that your personal symptoms are severe enough to constitute a disability, but you don’t get to rewrite medical definitions to decide what’s a disability and what isn’t because of the way you personally define wellness in spite of professional consensus.

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Anonymous #4 5w

last thing, saying “i don’t have a disability, because look at my success,” adds to longstanding cultural problems that not only belittle and add to a cycle of limiting people with disabilities, but also prevent people who suspect they may have a disability from seeking treatment. please try to expand your worldview and let your licensed healthcare providers know if you have any other questions about your condition.

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Anonymous #3 5w

I am not going to go through pages of debate on a limited media app, however, I will tell you, from working with doctors and children with autism, what you are describing as “recovery” is not recovery. You cannot “recover” from neurodivergence. Neurodivergent people tend to mask their symptoms. This eventually leads to what is observed as “normalcy.” This is not recovery. Sorry but your “non-conclusive” study conducted by non-neurodivergent people means nothing.

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Anonymous #4 5w

they’re three different studies. there are physical mrni images of the recovered brain activity in the uconn study if you google it and look at the actual articles.

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Anonymous #4 5w

also, it’s not like neuropsychologists are unaware of masking. two of these three studies are based on full neurological or neuropsych workups, not observed “normalcy.” i’m not sure why being neurodivergent would be a prerequisite to a doctor studying human brain activity? paleontologists aren’t dinosaurs? engineers aren’t trains?

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Anonymous #3 5w

No, but how can a non divergent claim they understand how a divergent brain work? They can’t, they never could. History’s best innovators, artists, inventors, and genius brains were all divergent. Why claim it’s a disability when that isn’t always true? As you grow older you learn to reign yourself in. Once again. That’s not recovery. Despite what you think, you are terribly offensive to neurodivergent communities and individuals.

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Anonymous #4 5w

that is unfortunately not how being a medical doctor works. it would be a conflict of interest in many cases if a psychiatric or neurological doctor were to specialize in a condition they themselves have. there is measurable electrical activity in the brain that corresponds to different symptoms; while symptom observation can be helpful, it is not the only way these things are diagnosed and treated. i feel i have been fair but would be open to explanation as to how what i said is offensive.

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Anonymous #4 5w

you really can’t reliably diagnose anyone you’ve never met with any neurological or psychiatric condition or argue with their actual doctors’ assessments. even practicing doctors cannot do that because of the nuance involved in these types of things, and you should be very wary of anyone who claims otherwise. many of the inventors, artists, etc. people claim to have had autism have not received any official evaluation, and those are simply sensationalized pop culture headlines.

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Anonymous #4 5w

this also leads back to my point that someone having success in life and someone having a disability are not mutually exclusive. there are many different severities and types of disabilities, and being a “genius” (although that term is no longer widely used because it has historically been used to marginalize people who don’t have one of many types of intelligence specifically valued by white western society) does not mean one has not also struggled from related or unrelated medical symptoms.

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